Last week was a turkey in honor of Thanksgiving, which is to say almost no one posted any keyword theme teams in the "What Did You Play..." section. Fortunately the Mutations and Monsters set has released, official M&M events have begun, and now that the holiday is over more people are reporting their games. Team of the Week now focuses on KEYWORD THEMES.



This week we look a theme within a theme played by peasant.

Step inside to read up to find out what he played and how he did!

Welcome to the Keyword Theme Team of the Week.

The Keyword Theme is a new mechanic and relatively untested thanks to 10 weeks of summer sealed events along with the temporary disbanding of Approved Play. Whether you like the new keyword mechanic or not progress is determined to march the game forward and a flood of Keyword Theme Teams will undoubtedly hit the maps with the release of Mutations and Monsters.

This column was resurrected to explore how viable Keyword Themes are in both friendly and tournament play. Please visit Rock810's excellent "What did you play, how did it do" thread, post your own Keyword Theme experience and you too could be honored in an upcoming Keyword Theme Team of the Week!

If you like what you see and you're feeling generous REP PEASANT HERE.




This weeks Keyword Theme is actually a Theme within a Theme using the Mutant Keyword, and taking a comic accurate spin on it:

Congratulations to peasant for playing what looks like a fun, competitive, comic accurate, Keyword Theme team. Not all Keyword Themes have to be comic accurate to make it a Team of the Week - but it certainly helps.

Thanks for reading and be sure to post your Keyword Theme Teams in the Combat Formations section!

I remember reading this report and liking it!

IMHO: One of the smartest things a "tentpole" player can do is to have a second attacker that can easily aggrivate opponents while the tentpole rests. I'm a firm believer in the "best defense is a good offense", and quite frankly not enough players build balanced teams...so somebody like Quicksilver causing aggrivation can be very effective.

Also a very wise choice on this team was the often ignored Nanoarmor (usually it is just passed up for Protected). We seem to be in a phase of the game when everybody and his brother is using either a move+attack piece relying on Super Strength, or manipulating a special object to cause damage.

Nice team. I would have thought the IronMan team to be much more effective against you with 2 starting outwitters. I was reading and thinking, why doesn't he just outwite your running shot and imprev and just blast you with Iron Man? Perhaps your positioning was far superior?

Anyways, good read.

actually, i think thats 3 starting outwitters.

Which makes it more amazing.

Great article, if i could remember what happened exactly with my teams, i would totally add them to these lists.

I'm noticing quite a few 3/4-man 300 point teams lately. It seems to go against the old idea of 2 figs per 100 points.

To be fair, this was a "tentpole" team, so with AW Magneto it was going to be pretty hard to make it a 5/6 figure team

But your point is a good one. I think it is partially due to the desire of many players to "trick out"/"box up" figures with cardboard feats, and also the tendency of the game designer to have moved away from PIT CREW type pieces. (thankfully)

QFT

The designs of recent sets have been great as far as minimizing the min/maxing (actually in general, its been great), and im glad that the lack of pit crew pieces is changing the game the way it is. Makes it feel more like a REAL superhero fight instead of a manipulated game of numbers.

The game changes all the time, so hopefully these changes are toward better game balance. I'd like a good chance at winning with my favorite characters instead of the same-old same-old.

It has a lot to do with the average cost per figure going up. Avengers only had 10 figs under 50 points. Justice League had 6. (Not counting bystander tokens.)

Good day all,
I must say I'm flattered that my team was picked for this thread. As for the Iron Man army, with its triple opening outwit, I thought I'd explain a little further. My opponent psyched himself out because he has apparently had some disastrous losses to Magneto in the past. So despite his overwhelming outwit, he didn't actually have a strategy beyond staying out of range of the Shield Disruptor. This was apparent from the length of his turns, but he further admtted that he had no strategy, which encouraged me to play more aggressively. He did consistently use Outwit, but the AVP map is mazelike enough that the Antmen were insufficiently mobile to make proper use of it, so he basically maneuvered IronMan into Outwit position and just took out my Running Shot. This was the first major mistake. He outwitted with Iron Man rather than positioning his carried Antman to do it for him, leaving him wide open to return fire.

I was immediately able to destroy the first Antman and base Iron Man with Quicksilver while preserving a line of fire for Magneto's next shot. He blinked and tried to push and run away (failing), which gave me a chance to rest and repeat the process in a further turn. This was his second critical mistake. He made a sacrifice play with the other Antman to buy time, which didn't work out well, and thereafter could no longer rely on Outwit because Scarlet Witch had reached her barrier clicks. He basically had to expect to push to get in any attacks and couldn't handle being outactioned at that point... He was basically beaten by his own perceptions, rather than by my team building skills because I expected him to hand me my head.

He'll get another chance with this week's pit fighting Warrior Theme Team... which is regrettably far from comic based (V Hawkman, LE Brunnhilde, SR Silver Savage, 300 pts.)

So, let me sum this up to say he played really badly. It happens. You took advantage of it so good job. I feel that the Iron Man/Antman team would normally take the Magneto team under normal considerations.

Nice read though on how your opponent lost with that team. Good job again.

Hey that picture is kinda hot, while wrong all at the same time. It makes me wonder, if you sleep with your sister from an alternate dimension, is it still wrong? What if she had a different mother or father? What if your an only child???

I also think that keywords could play into this - I've had a hard time making a keyword theme and getting 6 figures on the team. Keyword theme teams, at least in a 300 point build, seem to balance out around 3 to 4 characters per team. Not in every case mind you, but a lot of them.

Themed team building supports the idea of multiples of three. If I can get 6 guys on my team I will. If I can only get five, I might as well upgrade the others and take 3/4.